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Arab Regimes and the Betrayal of Palestine (w/ Farah El-Sharif) | The Chris Hedges Report Farah El-Sharif examines the forces that lead Muslim leaders to stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state. Chris Hedges This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble. Farah El-Sharif, writer, academic and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, is uncompromisingly blunt in her assessment of the Middle East. The decades of repression faced by an entire people have produced a fragmented society—culturally and through colonially imposed borders. To help understand why the Muslim world is so broken, corrupt and full of contradictions, El Sherif joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. “The systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American-Israeli Western project,” El Sharif says. Though the region has grown to have perceived independence from its former colonial states, El Sharif explains that the imperial agenda and the manufacturing of a Muslim menace continues. The psychological and physical damage runs so deep that many give in to their oppressors in hope of selfish prosperity, while others look at themselves as less than deserving of a dignified existence. The genocide in Gaza proves to be the most crucial litmus test, as the leaders of fellow Muslim countries stand by and witness the slaughter of their own people in exchange for “petty crumbs” from Western powers and the Zionist state. “A lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, Islam is compatible with civility,” El Sharif explains. “I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness.” Chris Hedges Producer: Max Jones Intro: Diego Ramos Crew: Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges Transcript: Diego Ramos Thanks for reading The Chris Hedges Report! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share Transcript Chris Hedges “The Muslim world has been tested with the weakest, most corrupt, and most hypocritical scholars and rulers because, as a community, our priorities have long been in the wrong place,” writes the Islamic scholar Farah El Sherif. “After being ravaged by colonialism, we no longer rallied behind the core characteristics of true leadership: Prophetic knowledge, principle, and integrity. We no longer valued what is just and true. We chased after the fickle mirages of autocratic power, wealth, charisma, and status. Thus was our downfall. As a result, we today see tightlipped, impotent Muslim rulers idly watch the river of blood as it flows from Gaza. We see compromised scholars betray the Qur’anic command for justice and bend their heads in humiliation and fear of worldly powers. Save for a few, most Muslim rulers and scholarly elites have chosen self-preservation and silence. The river of blood in Gaza is also a river of treachery and collusion. With leaders like these, it is no wonder the Muslim world is in the sorry state that it is in today.” “Palestinians could see from the very beginning that there is nothing ‘post’ about the postcolonial world order,” she continues. “They have ever since got less and less of their rights, lands, and dignity with each passing day. In the same era, the opium of nationalism spread like wildfire as the Muslim world was carved into colonially constructed nation states. The rest of the Muslim world enjoyed its false sense of ‘sovereignty’ and accepted its bridle, divorced from the lonesome plight of the Palestinian people, fooled into believing that the same system that gave birth to their ‘sovereign’ states could guarantee their safety and protection.” “What,” she asks, “is the Muslim body today if not diseased, aching, and wounded?” Joining me to discuss the state of the Muslim world , the connection between repressive Arab regimes and the so-called war on terror, how the genocide in Gaza exposes the moral rot within Arab ruling elites and the efforts by the west to manufacture a complaint form of Islam is Farah El Sherif. Farah received her PhD from Harvard University’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations with a research focus on Islam in Africa and the Levant, the modern nation state and Muslim political movements. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Stanford. You can find her work at sermonsatcourt.substack.com Farah, let's begin with the state of the Muslim world, the Arab world, which from the quotes that I pulled from the introduction, is you call it a diseased body, but it's also a created body by Western powers, propped up by Western powers. You grew up in Jordan. The Hashemite rulers of Jordan were imposed on the Jordanian people. Jordan didn't exist, of course, at the beginning, Transjordan, whatever you want to call it. They are from Saudi Arabia. The oil interests created the rulers of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And this has just been a kind of legacy, whether it's [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-] Sisi in Egypt or any other kind of pliant ruler. So let's talk about the state of the Arab world and let's talk about—and we were together in Jordan this summer—the failure on the part of Arab rulers to push back in any, with the exception of Yemen of course, push back in any meaningful way against the genocide of the Palestinian people and then in many cases actually collaborate with the Zionists to overcome the maritime blockade imposed by Yemen. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Chris, for having me and the generous introduction. Really, if you ask any person in Gaza, they will tell you that the thing that hurt them the most was not the American, German and Israeli bombs. It was the cowardice of kin. It was the collusion. It was the abandonment with this kind of Zionist campaign to exterminate them. That is what is the source of their true emotional and psychological scar. So to say that the Muslim community worldwide is stuck between a rock and a hard place is probably the understatement of the century. So if it isn't these bombs, quadcopters, drones that are shredding our bodies and burning our children alive, it's these colonially installed puppets that look towards this model of empire and salivate over it, competing in who gets to please it the most and who gets to bend over to be compliant towards it. So these security states have our people strangulated, whether it is through surveillance, repression or intimidation. And if it isn't the horrific Sednaya Prison that we've seen footage of and other sadistic torture dungeons under Assadist Syria, it is the hundreds of other unknown torture cells still operating in the West Bank, Egypt, Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, East Turkestan, and India, Kashmir, where political prisoners are detained by the hundreds and held under gruesome conditions, often without charge. So if it isn't that, it's the Israeli soldiers that relish in breaking the bones of Palestinian children prisoners. It's the [inaudible] concentration camp where Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted over a week ago with no word from him and where Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh of Al-Shifa Hospital was brutally raped and killed before him. It is the crude and sadistic Israeli parliamentarian urge to protect the so-called right to rape. If not that, it is the moral stain of Abu Ghraib. It is the Patriot Act that detains people like Dr. Aafia Siddiqui the rest of the Holy Land Five, and men like Abu Zubaydah, Guantanamo's so-called forever prisoner, or America's tortured guinea pig, who still resides in Guantanamo [Bay] since 2002, and who we forget is of Palestinian descent himself. So this, like you rightly pointed out, Chris, the systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American Israeli Western project. In a twisted way, they kind of all work together like this Pharaoh behemoth protected by Orwellian buzzwords like liberal democracy or state sovereignty or the so-called rules-based order, which Gaza has exposed as nothing but a ruse-based order. So it is as if this entire ecosystem of repression feeds on injustice. And we've reached the abyss of the abyss of repression. And this world order is this Frankenstein-like world whose horrors have been unleashed primarily on innocents. So what the great African-American theologian James Cone called structural sin, we've reached an alarming level of that, of desensitization to atrocious mass violence. And what does all of this do? It kills and strangulates all of us, not just Muslims. It produces this endemic spiritual death which affects not only Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians, but humanity as a whole. So this pernicious web of carceral cancer is sustained by the politics of compliance to an empire which sees Muslims like me, Palestinians and Arabs as mere fodder for this monstrous system. Nowhere is this collusion more evident than things like basic human rights and civil liberties being eroded in the West. Look at the state of Muslims in Germany. Just last week, I think a senator from Florida, Randy Fine, tweeted essentially a final solution, a call for a final solution, saying that it's high time we dealt with this fundamentally dangerous culture, i.e. Islam, what I would say to that is what is fundamentally dangerous and broken of a culture is one that has normalized genocide, one that is okay with watching images of people being burned alive and moving on with their day. That is what is fundamentally broken and that is what is dangerous. So this manufacturing, decades of manufacturing the Muslim menace, this idea of the war on terror, or let's change that proposition and call it a war of terror, a war of state terror that has Muslim political prisoners locked up and exterminated. This same campaign also sustains and funds the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the ongoing land grab annexation and colonization of land in Syria and Lebanon. And so all of this is part of a campaign to dominate and redraw the Middle East straight out of a 21st century crusader-cum-Zionist colonial playbook. Except this campaign is more militarized, it's more advanced, it's more funded and supremacist than ever before. So I don't think that this is a controversial point, Chris, but I wrote this in my Substack that we are currently living in an age of Muslim internment, but we don't call it as such. We've reached a point where we have normalized the genocide and extermination of a people deemed to be bad wholesale according to the logic of the Judeo-Western Christian civilization. So, yes? Chris Hedges No, go ahead. Farah El-Sharif I was just gonna say that since World War II, we've primarily normalized seeing images of torture basically on Muslim bodies from Bosnia, Abu Ghraib, the Rab'a massacre at West Bank, and now in Gaza, the Rohingya, the Uighurs. So it's definitely a time where, a time of harrowing, sort of desensitization and dehumanization on a global systemic level. Chris Hedges Well, as you are well aware, the United States acted no differently from Israel, as Israel is, of course, the genocide is more pronounced, but the kinds of the torture, the tactics, the indiscriminate killing, the racist language, this was all part of the project, the imperial project in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria. We have a kind of historical amnesia here in the United States. But certainly within the Muslim world, especially those people that have borne the brunt, mean, how many, what is it, one million Iraqis were killed because of our occupation of the country? They don't forget. They know. Farah El-Sharif No, absolutely, Chris, you're right. And I think that you talked about, with Dr. Gabor Maté, you talked about fragmented morality, but what we're seeing now in a lot of this knee-jerk geopolitical reactions to what's going on in the region, in the Middle East, is a kind of fragmented vision. And what you were saying about amnesia is absolutely true. So I'm trained as an intellectual historian where my job is to look at the long durée of ideas and look at the kind of the macro arc of where we're going as a human whole. And so I don't say this to be an alarmist. I'm probably the most anti-dogmatic person that you could talk to, but I say this not to kind of play the victim card that, we Muslims, we need help, we're so helpless, and then turn that victimization into furthering another kind of oppression or another kind of injustice. And we've seen that happen to many people who are oppressed or repressed, suddenly they become the tyrant. And I think that for Muslims and Islam, we're at a kind of a turning point, a testing kind of, Gaza has been kind of the litmus test for Western leadership to basically see if there truly are about the highest ideals of Western civilization protecting the right to liberty, the right to life, the right to freedom. And it is clear, it is exceedingly clear that these freedoms only extend to the in-kind group. They're only seen as worthy to Westerners, to white people. Whereas when it comes to these barbarians abroad, let's just decimate them, let's just destroy them. And this arrogant expansionist program is very reminiscent of the 18th and 19th century colonial brutal campaigns that I read about when it comes to the French in West Africa or the Dutch in Indonesia. And it's exactly all from the same colonial playbook, except now it is fattened up with this, like I said, this Orwellian cover of civility and democracy. And we should not forget that this campaign that we are seeing now is exactly out of [Benjamin] Netanyahu's kind of wet dream for the Middle East to take all of it, essentially. And in 1996, you know better than me about the Clean Break Policy that was designed to take out seven countries in five years—Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and then swallow the region whole. And for anybody to look at one regime change and to say that that's not part and parcel of this campaign. Even the War on Terror was cooked up in Tel Aviv in 1982 or even before in 1979 through the Jonathan Institute that Netanyahu himself founded. He said, we're done with the red threat now. Now is the green threat, that of Islamic terror. And so a lot of Muslims even internalize this war on terror rhetoric and they themselves start being apologetic and say, Islam is peaceful, Islam is this, Islam is compatible with democracy, if Islam is compatible with civility. And I see that as a sign of decimated consciousness, not just double consciousness. They don't know their own faith, they don't know their own history, and so they start being apologetic about it, and that is a position of weakness. Chris Hedges Well, that is, and you've written about this, there's a huge push to create this kind of quizzling form of Islam. That's what the Abraham Accords are. So, you know, we divide, and this is classic colonial rule, we divide, let's put it in commas, the natives into the “good natives” and the “bad natives.” Those who are willing to serve in our colonial police force, like the Palestinian Authority, which is currently attacking Jenin and has thrown Al Jazeera out of the West Bank, imagine, following of course Israel's example within Israel proper. Let's talk about that, the attempt to create divisions within the Muslim world and this insidious project—and the Abraham Accords I think epitomize that—to create quote unquote the good Muslim. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, I mean, it's a very archetypal story in a sense that in every struggle for liberation, there will always be the collaborators, the native informants, if you will, who kind of throw their people under the bus and scurry the favor of the powers that be and try to kind of gain favor in exchange for petty crumbs. But ultimately, history, scripture have shown us that it is a Faustian bargain. At the end of the day, these people who think that by cozying up with repressive forces of empire like Israel and the United States at the expense of the actual lives of the people they govern, they do that thinking that they're securing their reign or that they are getting political expediency or perhaps their son might become king next or some kind of delusional worldly fantasy like that. But the funny thing that you mentioned about the Abraham Accords and how they are singularly pernicious, Chris, is that they use this language of a kind of this prophetic authority. They invoke Abraham as the father of all three religions and hence give this kind of treacherous collusion, a kind of a prophetic theological tinge. And this is again, part and parcel of this Orwellian doublespeak where this time they have Muslim scholars, even here in America, Muslim scholars who defend that, who are in cahoots with the UAE and Saudi, who are mum about the genocide in Gaza. And so historically we've had Muslim scholars in the lead of anti-colonial resistance movements, today you see they're fully co-opted or they're in dungeon prisons like in Saudi. Right now, I read yesterday that every 25 hours, one person is executed under MBS in Saudi Arabia. The other day, just somebody I know was detained for around three months, a woman for wearing a kufiya, a Palestinian kufiya in the holy mosque of Mecca. So this is the kind of cancerous kind of relationship that I was referring to earlier. And the funny thing is, Chris, the irony about the Abraham Accords is that in the Islamic intellectual tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was asked about the Prophet Abraham and what he stood for. So one of his companions asked the Prophet, tell us about the Abrahamic scrolls. And you know what the Prophet said about that? He said, the prophet Abraham used to speak like this: “Oh you wretched, insolent, conceited king, I did not send you to this world to collect worldly benefits, rather I sent you to respond to the supplication of the oppressed on my behalf. To respond to the supplication of the oppressed on my behalf.” And this is the exact opposite of what the Abraham Accords, backed by the UAE and Saudi, Bahrain, Morocco, do. They actually strangulate the oppressed. They are actually all the people living under the rubble or starving or dying from the cold in Gaza were only able to get to that point because of the collusion and collaboration of Arab and Muslim normalizers. Chris Hedges Let's, for people who don't know what the Abraham Accords are, this is Jared Kushner's project under the Trump administration, explain what it's—I mean, in its rough description, it essentially normalizes relationships, diplomatic relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia, at the expense of the Palestinians, of course. But talk about the Abraham Accords and why they are so pernicious. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, it was signed in 2020, like you correctly said, under the Trump administration. It was, you could say, Kushner's kind of vision, alongside Netanyahu, of course. And it was signed between the US, and people don't even realize that Palestine is not even part of this accord. They arrogantly cut out the people whose lives are affected primarily. This is about them, this is about Palestinians, and yet they weren't consulted, they weren't even present. And so this is part of this kind of effort to kind of enact this cultural change, to promote a kind of Islam that is a quietist Islam, that is just cultural, that is just cosmetic. Women in hijabs, great. Men who go to the mosque, great. This rote ritual type of Islam that is devoid of its true spiritual core, its prophetic calling, which is what? To speak a just word in the face of a tyrant. That is the greatest jihad we're taught in our tradition. It's only later, actually Saudi itself never signed this. There's an article, if you look it up, maybe one week before October 7th, MBS said, we're very close to signing peace with Israel. And so even now, after the Gaza genocide, that has not been a disqualifier for any of these Arab regimes to stop or take back those treaties. They still have kept their word on these accords, on these peace treaties, these trade routes. And so when we say that these Arab armies, these militaristic behemoths, they've only been fighting their own people. They haven't been defending the oppressed that need them in places like Gaza. And now because of these Gulf states coming into the picture, we are seeing a more cancerous kind of form of normalization on the state level where you see even ordinary journalists, Muslims going online say, you know, we need to coexist. We need to do that. We need to do this. But then how can you coexist with an entity that is essentially trying to basically decimate your entire religious character, your identity, your beliefs, your core scriptural commitments, let alone, your brethren's bodies and the right to exist. Chris Hedges Before we talk about, I think you would agree, kind of, to me, inexplicable silence on the part of most Muslim, many Muslim leaders over the genocide, let's talk about what these Arab regimes are actually doing in Jordan, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, the land bridge that was set up, the fleecing of Palestinians by Hala, the shooting down of the active assistance by the Jordanian, well, they say it was Jordanian, it was probably heavily American. When I was in Jordan, I was a little surprised to see so many American contractors and soldiers, not in uniform of course, in the hotel where I was at. But let's talk about what they're actively doing. They're not just passive, but the active support for the Zionist state in the midst of the genocide. Farah El-Sharif Yes, I mean, again, if we want to move away from having a fragmented vision and looking at specific states and how they approach Palestine, Palestine has been kind of a revealer and it's pointing us to the longer arc of history. I remind your listeners that these nation states were basically concocted out of a colonial kind of divide and conquer classic strategy after World War I, things like the McMahon policy or the Sykes-Picot [Agreement]. And so these states are cut from this kind of smelly leftovers of the French and the British empires. And people think that just when you declare independence or you're now you're sovereign, it doesn't actually mean that we are free or sovereign. On the contrary, it means that the level of control and coercion and repression has gone underground. It's more ambiguous. It's harder to locate. So that is why, for example, if you go to a protest in a place like a Jordanian university and you say something, you could get snatched up. Or in Egypt, you express solidarity with the Palestinians. People are afraid to do that because they think that that could be cause for them to basically disappear and go underground. So again, this ecosystem of fear not only surveils and kind of mutes people who are so-called not in, who are kind of not in the genocidal atmosphere, but I like what, there was an Egyptian taxi driver in the video that went kind of viral, he was, he rode with a gentleman from Gaza and when he found out that he was from Gaza, he started crying and he said, no, no, no, I won't take your money. And this is the least I could do not to take your money. Forgive us, forgive us for we are occupied too, he said. [POTENTIALLY PUT VIDEO HERE] https://www.instagram.com/doamuslims/reel/DCY5x7Uo3lS/ And I think that is the sentiment that all Arabs feel, but that they cannot say that we are also occupied. We are also under this thumb of this brutal repressive system, whereas Palestinians have had the courage to break free from that. So in a sense, Gaza, sometimes the Arabs say that it represents the most free place on earth because it broke out of that prison. And so a lot of these prisons that Arabs, Muslims have in these Muslim majority Arab countries are mental colonization. If you see a policeman on the street, perhaps they shrink and cower more. Even I, I grew up in Jordan, it's a police state. I remember my dad, God rest his soul, he was a veteran journalist like you, Chris, and he was the editor-in-chief of Jordan's oldest daily. I remember it very well that when we started talking about something slightly taboo or slightly dangerous, they would say, the walls can hear everything, or he would crack a joke and he'd say, you're the neighbor's daughter, you're not my daughter just to kind of joke like that. But these were the kinds of jokes that we... Not funny. You know, this is the kind of climate that we grew up in. And now to see it become in this form, where it's a form of insanity, where you have your own people, your next of blood and kin being kind of exterminated right next door. And not only that, you see the trade routes that goes and funds the occupation boxes and boxes of tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce and produce that go to feed and sustain the settlers and the soldiers while Gaza starves. Chris Hedges Let me just make clear that this comes in this pipeline—UAE, Saudi Arabia through Jordan over the King Hussein Bridge. Farah El-Sharif Correct, correct, Chris. And so we should probably shed light on the plight of3, the journalist who merely conducted an investigative report about this trade route, this land lifeline for the occupation. And she is currently doing five years in jail and is paying very hefty penalties for so-called cybercrime. And it's kind of a warning for others that don't you dare expose complicity or collusion or collaboration because you'll end up in a cell or a ditch like her. So it's just, the nice thing about it, Chris, it's like there's no ambiguity anymore, that people can no longer say that we should give them the benefit of the doubt. They're doing their best. It's a tough neighborhood. I hate this cliche. I hear it all the time. And they're always kind of invoking that, it's a tough neighborhood. Politics are dirty. But it's being blown off with crystal clear clarity that this is one occupation. It's one system. The enemy is one. And so it's up to people and their moral clarity and moral courage to everyday shed a little bit of that fear because once they partake in it and once they accept it, they say, oh, generations of people who live in fear and I accept this. I think my generation and hopefully my children's generation will no longer accept that kind of degradation, denigration and fear-based rule. Chris Hedges Yeah, I'm glad you raised the plight of Hiba, who, as you know, I tried to visit. I filled out all the paperwork and then sat outside the prison, the women's prison in Amman all day and wasn't finally allowed in. How fragile are these regimes? Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, I sense they're very fragile. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, I mean, we forget that this nation state structure that was cooked up in the kitchen of people like [British army officer and archaeologist] T.E. Lawrence and Sykes-Picot, basically are constructs. They're recent constructs. And we think of them as something that is the status quo since time immemorial, but they're really not. They stand on very fickle ground as we saw that things can change overnight. And so it reminds me of the story of Pharaoh who in the Quranic scripture that we share with our Jewish and Christian brethren is that right before, when he got to the zenith of his power, right before he got to Moses, the sea split and swallowed him whole. He became kind of, until this day, a sign and a kind of a lesson and a symbol for what happens to people who think that they are invincible, for people think that they will live forever. And so God knows what the future brings, but this level of foundational rot, I don't think can hold much longer. Chris Hedges Let's talk about, you and I were in an event, it was a year ago in Toronto, we were talking about Palestine. And what struck me after we spoke is the number of young people who came up and asked me and probably you why the Muslim leaders, Muslim leadership didn't say what, what was not unequivocal in the condemnation of the genocide. And unequivocal in the condemnation of the apartheid state of Israel. And I want to ask you that question. How do you characterize the response of the Muslim leadership in the United States? Farah El-Sharif Yeah, I remember that Chris, and it was heartbreaking and it still is. And I thought about this a lot. And I think it's largely due to the fact that this war on terror rhetoric that kind of weeds out the bad from the so-called good Muslims, the good Muslims who are compliant, who don't support so-called radical, brutal acts of terror. So it's almost as if this colonial rhetoric has been internalized in the consciousness of Muslim scholars and leaders. And so that they say that when perhaps that if we stand with the oppressed, if we speak up for Gaza, the powers that be might think that I support Hamas or that I support this and that. So again, it's like this, not just decimated consciousness, like I said, it's more than that. It's kind of capitulating completely because you're saying that the vernacular of justice has to be removed from Islam for me to have a seat at the table, for me to gain proximity to power, maybe get the ear of Biden or get the ear of Trump. And I see this happening a lot that some Muslims are scurrying the favor of the right-wing kind of platform and thinking that, at least we meet on certain points regarding families and family values and whatnot. So to me, this just signals a huge crisis in our priorities. It signals a terrible misunderstanding of the true aim and kind of point of being a Muslim and that is standing firm in your own principles and ethics and higher morality that is tethered to the throne of God, that is tethered to the oneness, the true oneness of God. So other than oneness, what do we have? Multiplicity. And multiplicity signals, I'm afraid, I'm afraid of this commitment. What if I do this? What if I say that? And so that is in a sense, a kind of a hidden polytheism. And so when someone who has a position of authority and scholarship and people look up to them and then they lapse in that responsibility, the whole community is hurt. And the young people are like, where do I locate my Islam? Who am I? What does it mean? And so that is why I think, you know, we are in this place where it's too comfortable with our salaries, upgrading to our SUV and our nice respectable suburban life while our brethren overseas get killed, it's a complete lapse of leadership and collective morality. Chris Hedges Explain to me this conundrum of Muslims for Trump. Farah El-Sharif I think I get it. Chris Hedges It's kind of like it's kind of like Jews for Hitler. I mean, maybe not that extreme, but I mean. Farah El-Sharif Yeah. No, but I mean, that's where, you know, that gives you a window and how this destroyed kind of consciousness, this severe inferiority complex where you are willing to basically, you know, shut up and accept racist rhetoric about you and your people. And it's this amnesiac kind of just, you know, the Muslim ban, it's still ongoing. It's not like it ended under Biden. And so it saddens me that Muslims for Trump is even a thing because what you're buying into, you're buying into the very campaign that's going to probably deal the final blow. And already you can see how very vitriolic and toxic X [formerly known as Twitter] and platforms like that are and full-blown Islamophobia, xenophobia. And there's this like maybe a strong man appeal to people who think that, well, this is a leader and maybe these are remnants from autocratic nostalgia that I see bumper stickers in Amman for Saddam Hussein. I guess this idea that, okay, if this leader is strong and tells it like it is, and he doesn't mince his words, then he must have something charismatic or strong. Chris Hedges Well, but at least Saddam Hussein was an enemy to the Zionist state. I mean, I was in Ramallah this summer with Atef Abu Saif, and he said, if you go in these houses, you won't see a picture of [Former President of the Palestinian National Authority] Yasser Arafat, you'll see a picture of Saddam. But Trump has never done anything positive for Muslims. Farah El-Sharif No, it's baffling and it signals a dangerous level of kind of maybe collective insanity, but there are pockets of hope. I think that, I guess by and large, this election cycle was manic for everybody. And I think we've reached a point where this lesser of two evils conundrum has reached a point where it can no longer be replicated in future election cycles. People are sick of lesser of two evils. They just want no more evil, no more. They just want the good, the true, something other than an orange fascist in charge or a Black woman whose funded genocide. So this conundrum, really this strangulation, this choke hold that we're in, for me is a good thing because it signals that, okay, at least this Leviathan is probably taking its last breaths and that more sane, conscientious people with a moral conscience, with a real pulse, with a real concern for humanity, hopefully, will be the ones to come next and inherit this ailing world. Chris Hedges So where do you see us going in the months and years ahead and then to close, what do you tell young people, in particular young Muslims? I don't, for the foreseeable future, for me, it looks pretty dark. Farah El-Sharif Yeah, it's a hard question, but also it keeps me up at night. I think about this a lot. I've always been this intense girl that my family makes fun of me, that even as a younger kid, I was always brooding and thinking about the Muslim world, our affairs, our conditions. So I'd like to refer to a lecture that I was at when I was a student at Georgetown in 2008, my favorite Catholic theologian, gave the nostra aetate annual lecture at the time. He said something that really blew my mind. He said that in his comparing Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he said that Judaism rests on kind of tribal, hierarchical commitments. And so its natural culmination, its natural telos is this—the ethno-religious state of Israel. And that is its final conclusion. And then he went on to say that Christianity is beheld by the papacy and the institutionalization of the church. And that's its logical conclusion. When he talked about Islam, he said, Islam is in its essence universalist. And it is, it's tethered by this idea of oneness of man and Muhammad as a mercy to all of humankind, not just Muslims, but their final arc or their final culmination has not been decided yet. So I call on my fellow Muslims to take this opportunity of rampant moral rot, of decay and destruction in the systemic world order that we live in that has exposed itself as hypocritical, essentially anti-Muslim, brutal and completely inhumane to kind of lean in to their agency as Muslims that can perhaps bring about a brighter future, that can perhaps fulfill this untold role, a positive role collectively that Islam can offer the world. Because unless and until we remain shackled in our mental and spiritual colonized mentality, whether it is about how we know ourselves, how we know religion, how we conduct ourselves politically, we will never break free. And so we have the potential to do that. We have the potential to be like Malcolm. For me, he's the greatest American Muslim exemplar and courageous leader. We call him the great American Shaheed, the martyr of America, who he himself visited Gaza in 1964 and he said the spirit of Allah was strong in Gaza. So look to these people instead of trying to wait for your average Imam or your charismatic Sheikh to grow a backbone, you have plenty of exemplars within our tradition living and dead, including the people of Gaza themselves. There is a Quranic kind of pointer there that the oppressed shall become the teachers. They shall become the role models of faith, similarly to how in Christianity the meek shall inherit the earth. So the kind of fortitude that the people of Gaza have, let that not go in vain. The other day I saw a video, Chris, that I can't get out of my mind of a father holding the shroud of his child in the ambulance. And he was speaking so clairvoyantly, so prophetically that it gave me goosebumps all over. He's saying, Ya Netanyahu, Ya Arab, O Netanyahu, O you Arabs, O you colluders, everybody who failed us, Allah is only raising you so that he can tear you down. So don't think that this, what you see, all of this supremacy, this militarization, this ironclad power, this supremacy is going to be the name of the game forever. It's only this shocking in its dehumanization, this shocking in its genocidal bloodlust for it to, hopefully, wither away and usher in a different world, a better world. Chris Hedges Great, thank you Farah. I want to thank Diego [Ramos], Sofia [Menemenlis], Thomas [Hedges], and Max [Jones], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com. Photos Swarm of Insects in Front of Door (photo in thumbnail) (Original Caption) Locusts cover the doorstep of an Iranian home here, as the worst locust plague in 81 years brings threat of hunger and death to Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. (Photo by © Bettmann/CORBIS/Bettmann Archive) TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT TOPSHOT - An aerial view shows the destruction caused by Israeli strikes in Wadi Gaza, in the central Gaza Strip, on November 28, 2023, amid a truce in battles between Israel and Hamas. Israel and Hamas embarked on November 28 on a two-day extension to a truce that has allowed Israeli hostages to be freed from Gaza in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners. (Photo by Mahmud Hams / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images) King Hussein And Benjamin Netanyahu (L-R) Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Jordan's King Hussein, Pres. Bill Clinton & Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu during Wye peace agreement signing ceremony handshakes at White House (bkgrd. L-R: Sandy Berger & VP Al Gore). (Photo by Dirck Halstead/Getty Images) Egypt's Military Chief Visits Moscow MOSCOW, RUSSIA - FEBRUARY 13: Egypt's Minister of Defense, First Deputy Prime Minister and likely presidential candidate, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin (not pictured) in Novo-Ogaryovo residence on February 13, 2014 near Moscow, Russia. Egypt's Minister of Defense Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy are on a two-day official visit to meet with their Russian counterparts for bilateral discussions. (Photo by Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images) TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT-GAZA TOPSHOT - A missile explodes in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike on October 8, 2023. srael, reeling from the deadliest attack on its territory in half a century, formally declared war on Hamas Sunday as the conflict's death toll surged close to 1,000 after the Palestinian militant group launched a massive surprise assault from Gaza. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP) (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images) ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV or drone) flies over the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on November 3, 2023 amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images) TOPSHOT-SYRIA-CONFLICT TOPSHOT - An aerial photo shows people gathering at the Saydnaya prison in Damascus on December 9, 2024. Syrian rescuers searched the Sednaya jail, synonymous with the worst atrocities of ousted president Bashar al-Assad's rule, as people in the capital on December 9 gathered to celebrate a day after Assad fled while Islamist-led rebels swept into the capital, ending five decades of brutal rule over a country ravaged by one of the deadliest wars of the century. (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR / AFP) (Photo by OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP via Getty Images) Pro-Palestinian protestors demonstrate in Toronto to demand release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya TORONTO, CANADA - JANUARY 5 : Pro-Palestinian protestors demanding release of Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, gather to protest against Israeli attacks in Gaza on January 5, 2025 at Queen's Park outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images) U.S. Soldiers Continue Work At Notorious Abu Ghraib Prison After Abuse Allegations ABU GHRAIB, IRAQ - MAY 10: U.S. soldiers maintain security at the Abu Ghraib prison May 10, 2004 in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Allegations of abuse at the prison, notorious under the Saddam Hussein regime as a place of torture, lead to the suspension of the commanding officer Brigadier General Janis Karpinski and some 17 other soldiers. (Photo by Khampha Bouaphanh/Pool/Getty Images) James H. Cone Cone in 2009 | from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Cone Florida Stands with Israel Conference Randy Fine speaking at conference | Wikimedia Commons Oil Fires Burn In Iraq RUMAYLA, IRAQ - MARCH 27: U.S. Army Specialist Chad Morton, of George West, Texa,s stands next to a burning oil well at the Rumayla oil fields March 27, 2003 in Rumayla, Iraq. Several oil wells were set ablaze by retreating Iraqi troops in the Ramayla area, the second largest offshore oilfield in the country, near the Kuwaiti border. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) Gabor Maté By Clare Day | Wikimedia Commons ISRAEL-VOTE-BARAK-NETANYAHU (FILES) Picture dated 02 July 1986 shows Labor party leader Ehud Barak (L) in a Major General uniform and Prime Minister and Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Both men are running for the office of prime minister in 17 May 1999 Israeli general elections. (B & W ONLY) (Photo by GPO / AFP) (Photo by GPO/AFP via Getty Images) TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-RELIGION-DEMONSTRATION TOPSHOT - Palestinian policemen stand opposite to demonstrators during a protest against a decision by the Palestinian Authority to grant a public land to the Russian church, in the West Bank city of Hebron, on February 4, 2017. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP) (Photo by HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images) Abraham Casting Out Hagar and Ishael By Guercino | Wikimedia Commons French President Macron Hosts Working Lunch With MBS, Crown Prince, Prime Minister Of Saudi Arabia PARIS, FRANCE - JUNE 16: Emmanuel Macron (L) President of France, receives Mohammed Ben Salmane Bin Abdulaziz AL-SAOUD (R), Prince Hereditary, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the reception in the main courtyard of the Palais de l Elysee before their meeting on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France. Meeting, working dinner, between the President of the French Republic and the Crown Prince, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as part of his official visit to France, at the Elysee Palace. (Photo by Antoine Gyori - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images) US officially moves Israel embassy to Jerusalem JERUSALEM - MAY 14: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY MANDATORY CREDIT - "ISRAEL PRESS OFFICE / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) US President's daughter Ivanka Trump (left 3) Israel Prime Minister's wife Sara Netanyahu (left 2), Donald Trump's son-in-law and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner (R) and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) attend the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018. (Photo by Israel Press Office /Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) TOPSHOT-JORDAN-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT TOPSHOT - Jordanian police officers surround protesters during a demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians, in the town of Karameh on the border with Israel, on May 21, 2021. (Photo by Khalil MAZRAAWI / AFP) (Photo by KHALIL MAZRAAWI/AFP via Getty Images) "Great March of Return" demonstrations in Gaza GAZA CITY, GAZA - JULY 13: A Palestinian uses slingshot during the "Great March of Return" demonstration with ''Fidelity to Khan Al-Ahmar'' near Israel-Gaza border at Al-Bureyc refugee camp in Gaza City, Gaza on July 13, 2018. (Photo by Hassan Jedi/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Hiba Abu Taha was arrested May 14 for an article alleging that Jordan allows regional companies to ship goods to Israel. (Screenshot: Al Ordon Al Yoom/YouTube) https://cpj.org/2024/06/palestinian-jordanian-journalist-hiba-abu-taha-sentenced-to-one-year-in-prison/ T. E. Lawrence. British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. Wikimeida Commons US-VOTE-POLITICS-TRUMP Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets local leaders of the Muslim community who endorsedd him onstage during a campaign rally at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, October 26, 2024. (Photo by Drew ANGERER / AFP) (Photo by DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images) Saddam Hussein Iraq leader Saddam Hussein during one-day visit to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. (Photo by Barry Iverson/Getty Images) Clinton Arafat Barak Peace Talks 373012 03: U.S. President Bill Clinton laughs with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (L) and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat (R) July 11, 2000 at Camp David during peace talks. (Photo by Cynthia Johnson/Liaison) Americans Go To The Polls In The 2024 Elections FILE PHOTO (EDITORS NOTE: COMPOSITE OF IMAGES - Image numbers 2182486398, 2168330769) In this composite image, Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (L) and Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump. ***LEFT IMAGE*** CHUTE, WISCONSIN - NOVEMBER 01: Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to supporters during a campaign event at Little Chute High School on November 1, 2024 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. The event is one of three Harris has scheduled today in the swing state where she is in a tight race with her opponent Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images). ***RIGHT IMAGE*** POTTERVILLE, MICHIGAN - AUGUST 29: Former U.S. President and current Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks about the economy, inflation, and manufacturing during a campaign event at Alro Steel on August 29, 2024 in Potterville, Michigan. Michigan is considered a key battleground state in the upcoming November Presidential election. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) Gegenveranstaltung zum Deutschen Katholikentag, Hans Küng (GERMANY OUT) Foto: Professor Hans Küng (52) bei Rede. Berlin (Berlin West), 07. 06. 1980. Der Kirchentag von Unten, die Gegenveranstaltung zum 86. Deutschen Katholikentag, findet in der Freien Universität (FUB) statt. Star der Diskussion im Auditorium Maximum war der Theologe Küng, dem die Bischofskonferenz im Dezember 1979 die kirchliche Lehrerlaubnis (Missio canonica) entzog. (Photo by Mehner/ullstein bild via Getty Images) Malcolm X Speaking at Rally Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X draws various reactions from the audience as he restates his theme of complete separation of whites and African Americans. The rally outdrew a Mississippi-Alabama Southern Relief Committee civil rights event six blocks away 10 to 1. https://youtu.be/Zb4BksXtv1Y

It is undeniable that in the space of a year, the strategic landscape of the Middle East has changed dramatically to Israel’s advantage in a way that few could have imagined prior to the October 7 Hamas invasion. This many-fronted war is far from over. If Iran has been left exposed and embarrassed, there is the danger that she will take desperate steps like a cornered mother-cat. Hamas and Hezbollah may have been subdued, but the fanatics who make up their rank and file are far from being de-radicalized, and the same is true of like-minded terrorists and their masses of supporters across the Middle East and throughout the world. Radical Islamic terror remains a threat everywhere. "He removes kings and installs kings" What we may learn from the rapid downfall of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad tyranny, is that even when the forces of evil seem strongest and most powerfully entrenched, G-d Almighty, the Lord of Hosts, has the power to orchestrate His "hosts" and "legions", including all the many different and opposing forces on His global chessboard, to bring them down. For, "He changes times and seasons, removes kings and installs kings; He gives the wise their wisdom and knowledge to those who know" (Daniel 2:21). It is incumbent on all Jews, Israelis and all our friends and allies everywhere, to understand that it is ultimately G-d alone who granted success and blessed the efforts of all the courageous soldiers who put their lives on the line in order to defend us in Gaza, Lebanon, in the skies of Syria and Iran, and in other locations across the world. This Chanukah, let us remember G-d’s kindnesses and mercies to us when we gaze upon the lights of the Menorah, when we meditate on His great miracles for the Maccabees during the recital of Al Hanissim in the Amidah prayers and in the Grace after Meals, and when we sing His praises in the daily recital of the full Hallel (Psalms 113-118) on each of the eight days of the festival. A second Trump presidency Another miracle for which giving thanks at this time may well be appropriate is the election of President Donald Trump to a second presidency, which averted what seemed like a serious threat of four more years of radical, woke, Marxist-leaning misgovernment in the United States under a brainless, string-puppet figurehead controlled by ex-president Barack Obama. Many hope that President Trump will take serious action to clean up the corrupt Washington "swamp", boost the US economy, deport millions of illegal aliens who have greatly increased crime, drug abuse and sex-trafficking across the country, and put an end to global wars. However, it remains an open question as to what extent he will be able to deliver on his promises in face of the massive opposition that is likely to arise domestically and internationally as soon as he takes office, including some that may come from quite unexpected directions. The "Abraham Accords" It does seem likely that the incoming Trump administration will show stronger support for further forceful action by Israel against her enemies, while simultaneously promoting the resumption of the "Abraham Accords", suspended under President Joe Biden, which are intended to induce Saudi Arabia and other supposedly "moderate" Moslem states to give full diplomatic recognition to Israel so as to open the way for greater economic cooperation for the mutual benefit of all. It will indeed be entirely miraculous if the Abraham Accords can succeed in quelling the brand of extreme radicalism espoused today by millions of self-avowed Moslems across the globe, who are bent on intimidating and terrorizing people everywhere into submission, threatening death to all who refuse. Will the Saudis, who greatly profit from hosting Islam’s holiest site, succeed in persuading their fellow Moslems that true religion is not about violence and coercion but about persuading humanity to join together in seeking the Truth, submitting to the One God and carrying out His Will? Can the Saudis be brought to officially acknowledge Mount Moriah as the site of the destined Future Temple in Jerusalem as prophesied by the prophets of Israel? If Donald Trump and Elon Musk will categorically declare that the ultimate goal of all Middle East diplomacy is to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, that in itself will be an astounding miracle, comparable to King Cyrus’ giving the green light for the building of the Second Temple (Ezra 1:2). Someone please get the message to them! The Turkey factor The present-day republic of Türkiye extends over vast areas of Anatolia and Western Asia that in Biblical times made up Ashur, the Assyrian empire. Indeed, Turkey’s current leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, shows signs of being no less of a megalomaniac than Sennacherib, king of Ashur, who laid siege to Jerusalem in the time of King Hezekiah until his miraculous defeat. Erdoğan probably prefers we forget the time when a horse he was trying to mount threw him and gave him a mighty kick in the crotch, but it’s preserved on video. In his latest rant last week, Erdoğan said: "Turkey is far greater than its 782,000 square kilometers. Those questioning our presence in Syria, Libya or Somalia fail to grasp our vision." In other words, Turkey reserves the right to burst its way far beyond its current borders in order to resurrect the Ottoman Empire. Do we say good luck with that? Despite getting knackered in the crotch, the unhumbled Erdoğan fails to see any contradiction between his expansionist imperial visions and his unceasing accusations against Israel for the "illegal occupation" of Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. The greatest irony is that biblical prophecy points in the opposite direction to Erdoğan’s vision of "Greater Turkey", because it is precisely "little Israel", which all the nations of the world seek to push back behind the pre-1967 borders if not into the sea, which is ultimately destined to expand and encompass all of present-day Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, stretching "from the river to the river" — from the Nile to the Euphrates — as clearly laid down in Genesis 15:18-21, Numbers chapter 34 and Ezekiel 47:15-20. Under the final settlement, Israel’s Mediterranean border will extend to Hor Hahar, the mountain spur jutting into the sea aside modern-day Antiki (=ancient Antioch), well inside present-day Türkiye! Greater Israel — for what? The question we must clarify is: For what purpose do we seek the Greater Israel? After Israel’s miraculous victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967, when she recovered the biblical heartland of Israel, Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights, Gaza and the Sinai desert, all in the space of six days, the Israeli far left simply did not know what to do with the conquered territories and just wanted to "give them back" as quickly as possible in exchange for "peace". Thus after the reconquest of East Jerusalem, Israeli General Moshe Dayan immediately returned the keys of the Temple Mount into the hands of the Moslem Wafk police, since he clearly could not, or did not want to conceive of a Jewish Temple on the site. That would have obliged him to turn around his entire secular lifestyle and philosophy. Likewise, Israel’s far left campaigned unremittingly to "give back" the territories, until they jumped onto the accursed 1993 Oslo-Assla "Peace Process" nightmare that plagues us until today with the slogan: "YeShA (Yehuda-Judah, Shomron-Samaria & ‘Aza-Gaza) First". Immediately after the Six Day War, many believers saw clearly the hand of G-d in Israel’s stunning accomplishments against all the odds. However, the cynical, increasingly decadent Israeli left shared neither their faith nor their vision of the return to the territories as a step towards the restored Greater Israel. On the contrary, the Israeli left with their backers among the western powers, were determined to uproot the Greater Israel vision and made every effort to crush and demoralize the many Israelis who cherished it. Successive Israeli governments bowed repeatedly to pressures from Washington to show "restraint" in face of painful provocations by her enemies. If the same constant kowtowing by Israeli Jews to foreign pressure had existed in the years of the British Mandate (1917-48), Israel would never have attained her independence. It was the spirit of fierce Jewish nationalism that breathed in the souls of the pioneers and the Jewish military bands who fought against the Arab armies in the War of Independence that brought the Independent State of Israel into being. The Israeli Fighting Spirit This spirit of courageous Jewish nationalism shone in every word of Israel Prime Minister Menahem Begin’s famous retort to then-Senator Joe Biden in 1982 when he threatened to withhold US aid to Israel: "Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid." It was heartening to sense a return of this fighting spirit — the spirit of Judah and the Maccabees — in current Israel Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the same Joe Biden, now old and hoary, in the present war, openly defying his demands not to take the Gaza war into Rafah, not to enter Lebanon, etc. etc. In every case, following Biden’s dictates would have been a catastrophic capitulation to Israel’s enemies, while Israel’s successes came precisely from going against them. Let us understand that the new Middle East landscape, replete as it with possible dangers to Israel and ripple-effect repercussions for Jews and our allies all over the world, nevertheless presents us with entirely new opportunities for advancing the prophetic vision of Greater Israel. It may be that the hand of G-d has been relatively concealed within Israel’s military successes against her enemies, yet without His help, all the courage of our fighters and the brilliance of our intelligence officers could not have succeeded. We should be buoyed by the downfall of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Assad dictatorship, and the likely impending destruction of the Iranian regime. We must have faith that they came about through G-d’s redemptive kindness to Israel, that He is with us, and that He is leading us forward to the realization of the dreams of His servants the prophets. Yes, Israel needs to survive in a global jungle of wild beasts, and we have no option but to defend ourselves with a disciplined army and top-grade armaments. Yes, Israel is the holy land, birthplace of Abrahamic faith, a pluralistic society that gives religious freedom to Jews, Christians, Moslems, Bahai, agnostics, atheists… We do not seek to force people to observe Shabbat, eat kosher, pray… But those who know that the Land is promised to Israel under the terms of G-d’s Covenant — the Holy Torah — must strengthen our own observance and devotion, now more than ever, through the joy of seeing that G-d is truly with us. We must do everything in our power to promote the knowledge of the prophetic vision of a land properly policed, free of terror, murder, robbery, immorality, corruption and injustice, a land that will shine spiritual knowledge and the love of G-d to all the world, with Torah education for all Jews, Torah Academies for the nations, facilities for priests and Levites and their livelihood, and a rebuilt, functioning Temple.

Is UN torture expert overlooking Israeli abuses? Maureen Clare Murphy Rights and Accountability 24 December 2024 Alice Jill Edwards, the UN special rapporteur on torture, speaks during a press conference in Ukraine in September 2023. Ukrinform ABACA Last week, the UN special rapporteur on torture visited the Israeli towns attacked on 7 October 2023. As rumors that a ceasefire deal was near swirled in the media, Alice Jill Edwards reiterated her call for the “immediate and unconditional release of the hostages” held in Gaza since that date. “This is an unlawful act under international law. It’s an atrocity. It’s a war crime,” she said. Edwards told Reuters that she “had written to the Palestinian Authority about independent and verifiable reports of sexual torture and violence that occurred,” the agency reported, paraphrasing the UN expert. Edwards added that she would speak to Israeli officials about allegations of torture and abuse of Palestinians in its detention centers. But Palestinian human rights groups say that Edwards has ignored their extensive documentation of the “widespread use of sexual violence as a form of torture against Palestinian prisoners and detainees.” “Lack of meaningful action” In a letter signed by the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council and the Palestinian Non-governmental Organizations Network, the groups call out “what we perceive as a lack of meaningful action, responsiveness and impartiality” regarding Israeli abuses. They say that they will no longer engage with Edwards due to her failure to acknowledge “the lived realities of Palestinians.” The groups point out that Israel is holding the highest number of Palestinian prisoners in its history – more than doubling the number of Palestinians held before October 2023. And this doesn’t include the “thousands of Palestinians abducted from Gaza by Israeli forces and held in ad hoc military detention camps.” Not only has the number of Palestinians held by Israel sharply increased. “The scale and severity of crimes committed against Palestinian prisoners and detainees in every phase of their custody” has dramatically escalated too, the Palestinian groups say. At least 49 Palestinians have been killed or died in Israeli custody since 7 October 2023, though “the actual number is likely to be higher,” the rights groups add. The groups said that a confidential submission detailing the widespread use of sexual torture against Palestinian prisoners and detainees was given to Edwards. But she did not co-sign statements from fellow UN special rapporteurs “highlighting its use against Palestinians, including women and girls.” Nor did Edwards include the information provided by Palestinian human rights groups and the Palestinian Authority regarding Israel’s use of sexual torture in her latest thematic report to the UN General Assembly that was focused on the issue. Instead, the Palestinian groups say, the report by Edwards treats “Israeli violations as mere ‘allegations’ while describing crimes against Israelis as substantiated ‘evidence’ ” and falsely claims that the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp was closed. “Finally, it takes Israel as an example of good practice in supporting survivors to recover from sexual torture,” the groups added, “without any mention of Palestinian detainees, Palestinian victims and the treatment of Palestinian survivors.” The groups said they repeatedly tried to engage with Edwards “on critical issues” including Israel’s total warfare on civilians in Gaza, the targeting and killing of journalists in the territory and the escalated attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank – particularly violent mass arrests. But these evidence-based interventions have not been adequately acknowledged or investigated by Edwards, despite the “severity and entrenched nature” of Israel’s use of torture and violations of international law. Stark contrast In this context, Israel’s decision to allow Edwards to visit is notable. The welcome she received is in stark contrast to how Tel Aviv has barred entry since 2008 to the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, including the current holder of that mandate Francesca Albanese. Unlike Edwards, Albanese is outspoken about Israel’s violations of Palestinians rights and has faced a relentless smear campaign by the US and the Israeli government and its lobby groups in retaliation. This suggests that Israel grants and denies entry to UN experts based on Tel Aviv’s perception of their usefulness to its propaganda. The only public output from Edwards concerning the ongoing genocide in Gaza were two brief statements issued in May and in August. She sent only one communication to Israel in May. In one of those interventions, Edwards called for the transparent and impartial investigation of Israeli soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian detainee and for those responsible to be “held accountable by civilian courts of law.” Israel is not likely to carry out such an impartial investigation or prosecute those responsible in civilian courts, to say the least. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, appeared to acknowledge this reality in his May announcement that he was applying for arrest warrants of Israeli leaders. He asserted that the court defers to national authorities “only when they engage in independent and impartial judicial processes that do not shield suspects and are not a sham.” Last month, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that despite the deaths of dozens of Palestinian detainees in Israeli military custody, the military has not brought to trial any cases involving the death of a detainee. Evidence Edwards’ signature is notably absent from the many joint statements issued by her fellow independent UN human rights experts raising alarm and urging action to end the genocide in Gaza. But in January, Edwards co-signed along with Morris Tibdall-Binz, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, a statement demanding accountability for victims of sexual torture and unlawful killings during the 7 October 2023 attack. “The growing body of evidence about reported sexual violence is particularly harrowing,” Edwards and Tibdall-Binz stated. “Allegations of sexual torture include rapes and gang rapes, sexual assaults, mutilations and gunshots to genital areas.” A later report by an independent UN commission of inquiry, based on a thorough review of thousands of open-source items and hundreds of documents, pointed to “a pattern of sexual violence” corroborated by digital evidence. But the commission said it was unable to verify any allegations specifically of rape and that Israel obstructed its efforts to investigate such widely reported claims. The commission also notes “the absence of forensic evidence of sexual crimes committed on 7 October.” That commission also said that it was “unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation” and “found some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory with other evidence or statements and discounted these from its assessment.” A UN rapporteur like Edwards ought to be particularly sensitive and cautious on this matter, since false claims about 7 October rapes made by politicians from various countries allied with Israel have been repeatedly debunked. There is a persistent lack of credible evidence to substantiate Israel’s claims of rapes and other sexual violence by Palestinians on 7 October 2023. This lack of evidence stands in contrast to the growing body of testimonies and other documentation of systematic sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, thousands of whom are forcibly disappeared with their loved ones having no information of their whereabouts. Edwards’ upcoming report to the Human Rights Council will focus on hostage-taking as a form of torture. In their letter to Edwards, the Palestinian human rights groups said that centering this theme rather than the mass arrests and widespread torture of Palestinians “is yet another example of a troubling pattern that suggests you perceive Palestinians as less worthy victims.” In a call for submissions, Edwards described hostage-taking “as a form of manipulation, coercion and leverage in the hands of both state and non-state actors” – with human beings reduced to bargaining chips in “a cruel game.” She added that “recent data reveals that state actors now represent significant players” in the use of hostage-taking, whereby individuals are arbitrarily detained to be used as political pawns. It remains to be seen whether Edwards will include the Palestinians being held without charge or trial or otherwise arbitrarily detained by Israel among the victims of hostage-taking as a form of torture. Ali Abunimah contributed analysis. Alice Jill Edwards torture sexual torture https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-torture-expert-overlooking-israeli-abuses

Mental Health AI Chatbots Designed to Put You in PsychoSpace: Save Yourself, Give the AI Cellpals--Headspace, Ebb, Woebot, EmotionLogic et al--a Royal Miss Read a Book. Take a Walk. Have some Banana Sundae: That's Mental Health. Ramola D Fascinating read but clear sign-pointing to mental delirium, dependency on others (chatbots and virtual pre-scripting IT Mental Health AI therapists) and the takedown of your own brain—your very human private brain, to be mined for future Psycho Analysis and Psycho Takeover by eventual Psycho Docsters, previously called Psychiatrists—this scintillating article can be found at: Exclusive: Headspace's new AI chatbot offers mental health support - Fast Company. There are others: Why Headspace's CPO says AI won't replace your therapist Can AI therapists save us from the global mental health crisis? - Fast Company Reading through it becomes clearer and clearer what “AI” as being advertised here and overwhelmingly elsewhere online really is: knowledge banks cleverly converted into sinuous questionings and questings, leading you—the unaware, half-thinking, half-experimenting, half-exploring young reader—into a mire that’s carefully rules-based, censoring without overt pointers of censorship, deciding, delineating (your future brain and future), threatening, intimidating even, but with no ding-dings of Danger! Danger! to go with it, empathizing, hand-holding, whispering softly in your ear of Warm Companionship, Sweet Friendship, Motherhood and Fatherhood right by your side, assisting and supporting and helping you Survive, Thrive, Live Your Life—your oh so dreadfully difficult life—give it up already: Ebb and Woebot, supposedly AI-run, have been created by Authoritarians for Authority-Defining purposes, not to help you think, feel, act better to take charge of your own life. Seductive to teenagers, college-goers, high schoolers, and the idly ill-employed, such apps appear to be designed to strip you not only of your own critical thinking skills and brain but your creativity and your time. At the end of that App—and every app being advertised as helping you with your “Wellbeing” or “Wellness”—is an open door: to the usual Abyss of Psycho Drugs and Psycho Docsters. The Abyss is: The Erasure of Your Mind, Your Creative Agency in the World. Doctors and Psychiatrists Who Work With Straps and Syringes—and Police Coercion—Now Turning to Apps and Podcasts and AI Chatbots Cannot Be Trusted Doctor with syringe stock photo. Image of droplet, equipment - 13747210 When Mental Health “experts” who want to cast people as Mentally Ill at base — because they need to control others and others’ lives — combine with computational linguists, hardcore IT programmers, software designers, Needs Assessment and Performance Management managers, then run to Marketers and Advertisers and Salespeople to sell their Smooth Talk as smoothly as possible to unsuspecting consumers—especially the young, the trusting, the lonely—you can be sure there’s a catch. Screenshot: Body Cam Video-Still of Unlawfully Acting NYPD Using a Taser—an Inhumane Conducted Electrical Weapon, like an Electric Cattle Prod—Needlessly & Wrongfully on Charleen Hunter, Unlawfully Labeled “Violent” and “Bipolar” and Mentally Ill, in her own home: Never ever let Police enter your home; Never answer the door; Never call Police to enter your home nor your neighbor’s: Police need to Stop attacking people calling it a Mental Health Crisis Call, and falsely claiming “Psychosis/Violent/Combative” especially of Women. Watch the entire footage online. Part here: Body cam video of police responding to mental health crisis - YouTube/WNYT 13’s Coverage very skewed; This Incident and Faulty Media Coverage will be further reported at ECC shortly. “Experts” such as “clinical psychologists” “psychiatrists” “certified nurse practitioners” wearing white coats and wielding syringes—which they are using in hospitals today without consent, in ambulances, in courthouses, in homes, and with the incredibly criminal involvement of armed police using Tasers and physical assault and brutality—cannot be trusted. Doctors are shying away from Psychiatry. Medical Students are staying away from Psychiatry. But there are tons of maniacs out there in the Medical World—and above and outside it—who are trying hard to bring Psychiatry back to Head and Center. That’s the crux of the Medical Dictatorship and Mental Health Tyranny they’re attempting and it’s up to you and your friends to say No and bury it. If you want an “Empathetic Companion” sign up for a Class! Keep Your Bodily Autonomy and Sovereignty Intact. “EmotionLogic” another exciting offering which seems to have a backgrounding in Audio Analysis and Voice Analysis and Theater seeks to psycho analyze and box you in by your “voice print”. Who Exactly Are Being Referred to As “The Mentally Ill”? Huge effort is being expended by a certain coterie of criminals to try to cast everyone as mentally ill in some form, everyone endowed with some sort of “disorder” or “syndrome.” “Non-Lethal” Energy Weapons and Neuroweapons Are Being Tested and Used on People in Stealth This, of course, while stealth electromagnetic and brain stimulation and bio/chakra hacking neuroweapons are being used on people—increasingly large numbers of people—in neighborhoods and workspots, in public and in private, right in your own home, by numerous factions: students, soldiers, police, community “monitors.” A fact some know, most have been kept from for a long time by Lying non-disclosing Media: Welcome to the Gulag Created by Crooked Intelligence Agencies, Crooked US Military, and Crooked Fusion Centers | The EveryDay Concerned Citizen Diagnoses are Labels: The Poor, the Vaccine-Damaged, the Born Disabled: Are they Also Being Labelled “Mentally Ill”? “Mental Health Diagnoses” are False Psych Labels endowed freely on people by criminally-acting doctors who are feeding people into a “Patient” assembly-line to be Processed for Life, to be Brain-Degraded for Life. This is a fate that was once consigned to the Nineteenth Century but which became a hallmark of the Twentieth Century as well. It is a fate suffered by creative, artistic, musical, thinking, feeling people. And orphans, the disabled, those born out of secret genetic-modification experiments. Progress is Dropping Diagnoses, Labels, and a Medical System Which Has to Use Armed Police to Capture People Into Psycho Drugging Don’t become the captive “subjects” of Psycho Docsters who are approaching children and adolescents and the lonely now through “AI Chatbots” “AI apps” and “Generative AI” or “No Generative AI”—have a smoothie instead. Or sign up for an Art Class. Join a Club at school. Work on the Student Newspaper and tweak it around to Truth Not Lies. Express yourself in Writing and Poetry, Music and Dance. Advice to All Regarding Psychiatrists | The EveryDay Concerned Citizen Famous women whose lives were utterly taken down by Docsters and Psycho Docsters include Rosemary Kennedy, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald. Read their work, explore their lives, Make documentaries. Become a writer or painter or playwright or dancer or singer in your own right. Write a Blog. Become a Fiction Writer and a Poet. Or write plays for children and YA books for teenagers. Musicals. Help your grandmother write her Memoirs. Or your grandfather. Women today are still being Bullied and Attacked by Men, all over America. And the world. Stand up for women. Speak your mind. (1934) Edna St. Vincent Millay documentary - YouTube Six Degrees » Zelda Fitzgerald and Taylor Swift Zelda Fitzgerald: The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald/Ed. Matthew Bruccoli, Introduction: Mary Gordon And preserve the sanctity of your Brain and your Life. Ditch those “AI Apps.” Become a chef instead. Or just have a (cruelty-free) sundae. [Dairy, sadly, is all about persecuting Cows.] This may contain: vegan banana ice cream with chocolate chips in a bowl on a blue tablecloth Thanks for reading Plain Speaking! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share https://ramolad.substack.com/p/mental-health-ai-chatbots-designed?triedRedirect=true